


Dream a Little Dream of Me

by n_a_feathers



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Memory Alteration, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:42:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21631075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/n_a_feathers/pseuds/n_a_feathers
Summary: One day after the end of the world and 1978 years after his own came crashing down around him, Crowley wakes up to the dim light of an English spring morning casting shadows across the industrial concrete walls of his bedroom and has to bite back familiar regret.Not again, he thinks.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

One day after the end of the world and 1978 years after his own came crashing down around him, Crowley wakes up to the dim light of an English spring morning casting shadows across the industrial concrete walls of his bedroom and has to bite back familiar regret. The muted roar of early Monday traffic barely makes a dent on the silence inside his flat.

He is alone and yet he reaches out, hesitatingly, to feel the bed beside him, knowing it will be cold even before his fingers touch the fabric. In a fit of desperation he claws out, pulls the other pillow to him, bodily curls around it, presses it to his face like he wants to suffocate himself, and breathes deep. There is the barest hint of scent but he hunts it out with the unerring precision of a bloodhound. He would know that smell anywhere.

He allows himself to wallow in it only a moment and then shame gets the better of him. He flings the pillow across the room with a frustrated yell and, rolling onto his back, he covers his eyes with his forearm and wants to cry. After nearly 2 millennia of tears, though, he doesn’t know if he has it in him anymore. Instead, the sadness clenches and thickens in his throat. He chokes on it like a physical thing.

_Not again_ , he thinks.

*****

They meet on a wall at the start of the world.

The angel – soon to be introduced as Aziraphale – will only look at him in brief glances and stuttering smiles. He’s hedgy and noncommittal as Crowley – or Crawly, as he still was back then – engages in small talk.

Crowley is confused by Her reaction to the humans eating from the tree of knowledge. For an all-powerful being, placing an off-limits tree full of tasty-looking fruit in the middle of a garden paradise feels a little like She’s setting them up to fail. Crowley might have hastened the failure along but surely, sooner or later, one of them would have looked at all those apples and wondered what the harm was. They didn’t know the difference between good and evil, after all. How can you place blame on someone like that?

He raises his concerns with the angel, perhaps hoping to have someone else share his view, but he makes a lot of noise about it being wrong without actually producing anything in God’s favour beyond assumptive evidence.

“Well, it must be bad,” Aziraphale states nonchalantly when pressed. He says it with the same frankness you would state the weather while you were standing out in it; in the same way they will be able to say, for the first time ever in the existence of the world, _oh, it’s raining,_ in only a few minutes time. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have tempted them into it.”

Crowley doesn’t consider himself bad, though. Yes, he’s a demon – but that’s just a job. He doesn’t harbour any ill-will towards humans. Hell told him to go up and cause some mischief and that’s what he’d done. He’d pointed Eve in the direction of the apples because, really, out of all the things he could have done to carry out his orders, how bad could it be to have a little knowledge?

Very bad, apparently.

God truly is _ineffable_.

If that had been the end of it, Crowley might have walked away, gone on with his life and not given Aziraphale a second thought. He was, after all, the angel who had unquestioningly thrown the humans out of Eden on God’s orders for something they really couldn’t be blamed for doing. Not a decent act according to Crowley’s own very new moral compass.

But then there is a moment of doubt in the angel – and that makes all the difference.

A flaming sword gone missing and a true spark of caring, the first Crowley’s seen in a long time. It had been a commodity severely lacking in Heaven even before his fall. No wonder he’d spent so much time in the firmament, moulding stars and planets out of his own imagination, avoiding them all.

But this angel – this beautiful, wonderful angel – has a heart full of it. Crowley looks upon him in wonder and he yearns. For what, he’s not exactly sure. Understanding maybe? A little compassion, even for a fallen angel?

It makes Crowley want to be gentle. Not good, not nice – simply gentle.

“Oh, you’re an angel. I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”

As the rain begins to fall for the first time on the newly-made earth and the smell of petrichor rises around them, the angel spreads his wing over Crowley’s head as though it were the most natural thing in the world and Crowley thinks, _this one is special_. He shuffles closer and they continue to talk long after the humans find shelter and disappear from view, leaving Aziraphale to guard an empty paradise.

*****

The first few millennia go by in a rush; there are so many new places to explore, things to do, people to meet. The humans are terribly clever. What started off as two quickly increases to tens and then hundreds and then thousands, all of them spreading out and making the land and animals God had given them work to their advantage. They make houses and then communities, towns and then great, sprawling cities.

They’re clever in other ways, too, the kind of ways that Hell encourages. Crowley doesn’t like that quite as much. He knows he should, but he just can’t make himself revel in the petty cruelties they think up themselves that turn their souls towards Hell. He does what he’s told, though. It’s his job. He figures out sleeping fairly early on, though, and makes it a regular part of his life on earth. That cuts down on the amount of time they can boss him around.

Occasionally his path crosses that of the angel he'd first met on the walls of Eden and each time he’s struck anew with the warmth and tenderness he feels towards him. Very undemonly, he knows, but first impressions are hard to shake. He has the feeling Aziraphale maybe feels something similar. He’s never outwardly unhappy to see Crowley and, actually, on a couple of occasions, his face has positively lit up on hearing the demon's voice or seeing him across a crowded room.

As things speed up and the world fills with people and their many kinds of cleverness, it’s tempting to go to the places where he knows Aziraphale will be. Mesopotamia, Golgotha: nice to see the angel but both fairly horrid affairs. Uz and Punt were more pleasant. Uruk, Canaan, Bethel, Elim. So many places and all the people in them, soon to be long forgotten by the world, and yet, through Crowley’s fond memories, they’re granted a fragile immortality.

Crowley begins to learn what it means miss a person. He wouldn’t describe himself as being lonely in the angel’s absence – he’s never considered himself particularly prone to desiring company in the first place – but he certainly looks forward to their meetings. He thinks back on the languorous afternoons they’d shared (they figure out alcohol fairly early on in the proceedings and never look back) when he’s feeling dejected and wishes they could be back in that time and place. If given a choice of being alone or having the angel’s company, he would choose the latter every time.

It’s a dangerous sort of business to spend time with an angel, though. For both of them, really. Neither of their respective sides would be particularly pleased with them if they knew they were fraternising. So, although Crowley would very much like to spend all of his time with Aziraphale, he limits himself to once every other decade.

He isn’t actually searching out the angel, for once, when he runs into him in Rome, not that many years since they last stood together and watched the humans perpetrate another of their clever cruelties. That had been a bastard of a day, to put it lightly.

Aziraphale’s smile as he approaches Crowley is the most genuine and open he’s ever seen on the angel’s face. Usually he hides it away in the anxious little creases at the corners of his mouth that could be explained away as chagrin. Crowley has always thought that was very wise of the angel. You never knew who was watching.

Crowley has changed his physical form up in the ensuing 8 years but Aziraphale is as he’s always been. Clothes are the only thing that seem to change with him and even those not all that often. He’d kept the same comfy-looking tunic until it fell apart at the seams and he literally couldn’t wear it anymore. He’d bemoaned its loss to Crowley on many occasions since. Perhaps being finicky about keeping up with fashion is too much pride for an angel to bear.

Aziraphale is more forward than usual. “Oh, well, let me tempt you to—”

Beautiful angel. He could tempt Crowley to anything.

Crowley lets the angel lead him to Petronius’ new restaurant and watches as Aziraphale downs oysters one after the other with a look of supreme satisfaction on his face each time. Crowley barely touches them himself. He’d never understood the appeal of eating unless it was absolutely necessary to keep up appearances and, having now experienced the texture of an oyster, he’s not likely to change his opinion. He’s more than content to sit back with his drink and watch the angel clear the plate.

They order unmixed wine and Crowley gets drunk on Aziraphale’s company and lets down his defences. He drinks more than he’s ever drunk in his life and feels wonderful and floaty as his eyes, hidden behind his newly acquired glasses, anchor on the angel’s face and don’t leave it for even a second.

Aziraphale orders another place of oysters and Crowley asks, “When did you start eating? I didn’t think your lot approved of that.”

“Oh, just a few years ago,” answers Aziraphale, playing fussily with his ever so clean hands. “I suddenly thought, well, why not? So I tried it, and I liked it, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Crowley takes a sip of his wine. “Not worried about gluttony?”

“Don’t be silly,” Aziraphale hastens to say, his voice gone high and his eyes skittering away from meeting Crowley’s every time he tries. “Angels can’t be gluttonous.”

Crowley’s watched the angel down oysters in a truly spectacular fashion accompanied by the most tempting noises for the last hour and would beg to differ except that Aziraphale looks fairly disconcerted by the subject. He lets it go.

“Been busy lately? I haven’t seen you since… well, you know.”

“No, I’ve been taking a bit of a break.”

“A break?” Crowley arches an eyebrow. “I didn’t think your lot let you do that?”

“They don’t, technically, I suppose. It’s not so much a formal thing, as…”

Aziraphale peters off.

“Putting things off for a bit?”

“Something like that.”

They lapse into silence for a while after that. It’s not uncomfortable, though. Nothing ever is between them. Crowley only allows himself to wonder for a second what they might make of themselves if they weren’t always working at odds. They could be brilliant. Or maybe not so much brilliant as boringly mediocre but happy. He thinks that might not be so bad.

Before long (but also several hours later) the restaurant has to close and so they have to leave. By this point Crowley is well and truly drunk and Aziraphale seems to be the same. They zigzag down dusty Roman streets and never touch once.

Aziraphale has a house in the suburbs and they sit out in the atrium where they can see the stars and dip their feet in the impluvium. An amphora of wine has appeared at some point (Crowley knows neither whether it was gotten naturally or miraculously, nor, if it were the latter, whether the miracle had been his or Aziraphale’s) and it sits between them, handy for when they need to refill their cups – and they refill them often.

“I did that one,” says Crowley, pointing up into the star-studded sky. He has to squint to see properly and then readjusts his finger to point at his real creation.

“Lovely, really very lovely” says Aziraphale dreamily, holding his cup close to his chest, and Crowley preens internally. “I do think the heavens – lowercase h, of course – were one of Her better ideas.”

“I still don’t get it, though.”

“Get what exactly?”

Aziraphale smiles at him and he gets lost in it. It’s only when the smile transforms into bemused confusion that Crowley remembers he’d been asked a question.

“This great plan of Hers.”

“It’s not ours to understand, Cra- Crowley. It’s ineffable,” Aziraphale repeats for the umpteenth time over their acquaintance with a decided nod of his head. What’s truly ineffable to Crowley is how someone can be so committed to a cause they can’t even begin to explain.

“You always say that. Haven’t you ever sat down and thought about it? Tried to find some logic?”

“It’s not a very wise thing to do.”

“And why not?” Crowley asks, his voice growing heated. “What’s so wrong with asking questions? Why’s She the only one who gets to know things?” Aziraphale doesn’t have an answer for him and he never will. Crowley knows that. He loves him more than anything in the world and yet sometimes he hates him. Suddenly Crowley feels maudlin. It’s not a good headspace to be in. “All I did was ask questions…” he mutters and downs the rest of his cup.

“If I’m being honest, I did wonder… after… you know,” Aziraphale admits with some hesitation, making a little cross out of his fingers that would have been charming if the event it referred to hadn’t been so horrifying. A drop of wine falls on his tunic as he tilts his cup too far in the effort and Crowley can’t tear his eyes away as the stain spreads. “I don’t know that it couldn’t have been done some other way. Some… kinder way.”

Crowley scoffs. He’d stood with Aziraphale in silence for the six hours it took Jesus to die. There had been nothing kind in it. No hint of mercy in his suffering, no sign that She cared at all.

“I’ve been trying to make sense of it.”

“Had any luck?”

“No, not really. It’s—”

“Ineffable,” they say at the same time and Aziraphale shoots him a disapproving look.

“Please don’t make fun of me. I’m being deadly serious.” Aziraphale wrings his hands together. “It’s weighed very heavily on my mind.”

“Maybe none of it matters,” offers Crowley with a shrug. He reaches for the amphora and refills his drink. The vessel is still surprisingly full for how much they’ve drunk. Maybe Aziraphale miracled it. Clever angel.

“Maybe it doesn’t,” admits Aziraphale, head hung low. “That’s seeming increasingly likely lately.”

If Crowley had been sober and in his right mind, he might have realised that this line of conversation was contrary to the angel’s usual staunchly held views. He might have recognised it was a dangerous sentiment and that something was obviously amiss.

He wasn’t sober, though. He was drunk on middling wine and his head felt heavy and weightless at the same time, so when Aziraphale leant into him, he leant right back and when Aziraphale’s nose tickled his jaw, he turned into it. Close enough now that he could count each of Aziraphale’s individual eyelashes – if only he could keep focussed on any one thing for more than a few seconds.

“Whadya doin’?” Crowley asks as Aziraphale reaches out and takes the glasses from his face.

His fingers twist themselves up in the fabric of Crowley’s toga and pull him closer. Crowley lets him. He hardly needs the encouragement to close the distance between them; permission would have been enough. “Let me tempt you.”

Still, he has to ask: “What are you playing at, angel?”

“Nothing,” Aziraphale answers, but he doesn’t even try to sell it as truth. The word is a puff of hot air against Crowley’s throat, existing afterwards in a ghost sheen of dampness until it’s burnt up by the feverish heat of his skin. A tingling sensation is all that remains in its wake.

“I don’t think either of our sides would like this.”

“What does it matter?” says the angel with a hint of a whine in his voice. He tugs at the fabric of Crowley’s toga. “I don’t like my side – and I don’t think you like yours much either.”

Those tugs have pulled them even closer. Distractingly close. Aziraphale is looking up at him with his stupid (lovely) doe eyes, beseeching and… something else. Crowley’s mind catches on that, as much as it’s able, and a spark of suspicion alights in him.

“Where’s this coming from then?”

“It’s nothing.” Aziraphale lets out a frustrated groan. “Oh, won’t you just kiss me?”

Doubt flees from Crowley’s mind in the rush of _want_. He’d hardly ever allowed himself to humour the prospect of this kind of human connection, being as they’re enemy agents whose sides have been playing a game of tug of war with human souls for millennia, but on the colder nights, when he feels his loneliness most keenly, it’s thoughts of Aziraphale that keep him warm.

And now the angel is asking him to kiss him. He can hardly argue with so straightforward a request.

Aziraphale’s lips are soft and gentle against his own and it’s everything Crowley’s wanted for four millennia. Crowley’s never kissed anyone before (he wonders if the angel has) but his corporeal form seems to know what to do without too much thinking – and no one’s injured yet so it can’t be going too badly. Aziraphale doesn’t seem to have any objections; he’s leaning into Crowley, giving him a tease of the soft flesh concealed beneath his toga and Crowley aches with how much he wants to touch.

Then, an instant later, he realises he _can_. He blames his current inebriated state for making him a little slow on the uptake.

Aziraphale has drawn his leg up out of the pond in his slow slide towards Crowley and, as the angel continues to lavish his face and neck with kisses, Crowley extends his hand – only shaking slightly – sneaking it up under the voluminous fabric of the toga, and places it on his knee.

Crowley’s form is all hard angles and sharp lines but Aziraphale’s is beautiful and rounded, filled full and glowing with internal goodness. There is a give to his flesh as Crowley clutches at him, a yielding like the yielding of his mouth as Crowley licks into it.

Torture, he thinks. This is the most exquisite torture.

Then Aziraphale’s hand is joining his and guiding it further up his thigh, underneath his subligaculum to his sex and Crowley can’t help the string of unrelated consonants that leave his mouth. This is more than he ever thought he’d be allowed. Certainly more than he deserves.

He looks at Aziraphale, his eyes exposed and desperate. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” replies Aziraphale, the sibilant drawn out as he encourages Crowley to wrap his hand around the girth of him. His eyes slide close on a moan – even better than the ones he’d made earlier over the oysters.

Crowley can’t shake off four thousand years of caution so easily, though. He thinks back on the angel’s restraint in all their previous meetings – side-by-side certainly, but in a kind of accidental way – and knows something is off – but Aziraphale’s hand coaxes his to stroke along the soft hardness of himself and the thought is lost again.

Crowley fights for breath as he continues the pattern Aziraphale has suggested to him. It suddenly seems as if there’s not enough oxygen in the room. He may as well be out in space for all the trouble his lungs have functioning. One last worry: “What if they see?”

“Let them.”

There is fight in Aziraphale’s voice. For a second, Crowley sees him as he really is: not this humble, soft human, but a being of pure light, arrayed in Heaven’s martial garb, his wings huge and fearsome behind him. He is reminded that Aziraphale, despite his bumbling, fought in the great battle, and comported himself well enough to be charged with the guarding of Eden’s eastern gate. He sees him as he really is and trembles.

The grip of his hand takes on a new dimension. The way his smallest movement can make Aziraphale moan and clutch at him feels like the most power he’s ever wielded – and the most responsibility. Even though he has minimal experience in this area, he’s determined to make it good for his angel.

As if reading his mind, Aziraphale asks, “You’ve done this before?”

His voice is breathy, like the wind from a bellows and Crowley realises he’s the one pumping the handles. A sheen of sweat is beginning to form on his temple, sticking his gorgeous white curls to his forehead, and his head is thrown back just slightly, mouth ajar. If Crowley didn’t have a hand up his toga, working him with quick strokes, he could almost be forgiven for mistaking his current posture as silent prayer.

“Never.”

“Really?” Aziraphale asks with no small measure of surprise, his eyes fluttering open.

“Who was I gonna do it with? Humans? Other demons?” Crowley cringes at the thought. “Not worth the effort.”

“I just thought—well, with the temptations and all—oh, never mind.”

Aziraphale leans forward and Crowley takes it for the invitation it is. He recaptures the angel’s lips and drinks of them greedily, eases him backwards and down onto the tiled floor and places himself over him. The angel is practically falling apart as Crowley strokes him, his kisses becoming more and more uncoordinated so that eventually Crowley gives up on his lips and just tastes of whatever skin he can reach. Cheeks, chin, nose, neck: it’s all the same to him. For four thousand years he has starved; there’s no morsel of Aziraphale he’ll refuse or find unsatisfying.

Aziraphale’s hand creeps up his thigh and then Crowley belatedly realises he’d better make an effort, too. He does, not putting too much thought into it, just something to match his current physical appearance, and he’s not prepared for the change. It’s like being thrown into a brick wall. All of a sudden there’s a whole new onslaught of feelings and sensations and for a moment he’s so overcome by the immenseness of it all, he can’t focus on anything. The stroking of his hand falters as Aziraphale gets his own around Crowley and then it’s like being hit again, a constant barrage like the waves of the ocean of new things he’s never experienced before. He’s drunk on it, drunk with wanting, a hundredfold better than regular drunk, and his need for Aziraphale – physical now as well as emotional – is immediate and overwhelming.

Now he understands _hunger_. Now he understands the need to consume.

Why has it taken them so long to try this?

Crowley’s newly materialised cock throbs insistently between his legs, hard and wanting and impossible to ignore. Aziraphale doesn’t ignore it. Every stroke sparks electricity out even to the tips of his fingers and toes.

“You’re beautiful.” Crowley speaks into his neck, lips smearing against his skin. “So perfect.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Still,” Aziraphale’s lips screw up in a dissatisfied little knot, “please don’t.”

Aziraphale may not want him saying it aloud, but Crowley continues to worship every little bit of him in his thoughts. He loves every part of him and delights in discovering all these new aspects of Aziraphale he’s never witnessed before.

Crowley pushes Aziraphale’s toga up around his chest, exposing the plush flesh of his stomach, and he takes the time to kiss and taste it as his hands work to undo the knots of Aziraphale’s underwear. That accomplished, he noses lower, into the thatch of golden curls and the silky smooth skin that sheathes Aziraphale’s jutting cock. He smells purely himself down here and Crowley inhales deeply.

Then it’s the most natural thing in the world to take Aziraphale in his mouth and wring beautiful sounds from him, more beautiful even than the choirs of heaven. The world narrows down and Crowley loses himself in the back and forth. He thinks he could stay like this forever, even as his jaw begins to ache and his arousal begs for some kind of stimulation.

He slides a hand up between Aziraphale’s legs, cups his balls and feels them draw tight. It’s then that Aziraphale’s hands tangle in Crowley’s newly short-cropped hair and tilt his head upward until their eyes meet.

The angel looks nervous, eyebrows doing a funny little jig as he visibly searches for words. “Are you going to…?”

Crowley cocks an eyebrow because there are a million things he could be doing and Aziraphale is going to need to be a little more specific. It takes Crowley a few moments and some increasingly abstract gestures on the angel’s part to understand what Aziraphale’s getting at.

This is already more than Crowley thought he’d ever get and so Aziraphale’s inference – that there’d be more and that he’d be the one doing it – is an entirely new and devastating idea to him. He would be content just to worship at Aziraphale’s feet for the rest of his life, never mind expecting anything in return from the angel.

“Don’t you want to…?”

“Oh,” exclaims Aziraphale with genuine surprise, “well, I thought that you’d rather…”

Crowley crawls back over Aziraphale’s body and kisses him. Once, twice, three times.

He pulls back and smiles down at Aziraphale, trying to commit every tiny detail of his expression to memory. “I want whatever you want, angel.”

“You don’t care what the humans say?”

“No.” Crowley knows what Aziraphale’s alluding to but he’s been around long enough to have seen the humans’ ideas on things change a thousand times over. No doubt they’ll keep changing and the truth, as much as there is objective truth in these things, will remain where it’s always been, ready for them to figure it out as soon as they can throw off their prejudices. “When’ve they ever been right about anything?”

“Oh.” Aziraphale really does look thrown then and Crowley wonders how he’d imagined this would go. (Had he imagined it? And if so, for how long had he been imagining?) Had he expected Crowley to be as brutish and as vile as all the other demons down in hell, revelling in the chance to put himself over an angel? But no, after four millennia, how could he possibly have thought that?

Then the angel nods, a determined look on his face. “Alright then.”

Aziraphale sits up as Crowley shuffles back and starts divesting himself of his clothing. With an economical snap of his fingers and a downwards pull of miraculous energy that makes Crowley’s skin tingle, an amphora of oil appears in Aziraphale’s free hand.

It’s so sudden and unexpected of the angel, which also makes it the funniest thing Crowley’s ever seen and he laughs and laughs. Between hiccupping chuckles, he gets out, “I’d like to see you have to explain that one to upstairs.”

It’s then he realises that Aziraphale isn’t laughing. He’s got on a grim little look that shuts Crowley up. So he lays back upon the tiled floor, blessedly cool against his super-heated skin, and spreads his legs, an invitation if ever there was one.

Aziraphale slicks his (beautiful, clever) fingers up and after an exploratory circle of the tight muscle, he slips them inside and Crowley doesn’t realise there’s the possibility of discomfort, and so there isn’t any, and the whole thing goes fairly easily and quickly.

Crowley’s arousal flags in the interim. It’s an effort to have a cock and it’s an effort to keep it hard in his current inebriated state but Crowley is nothing if not stubborn. He looks at the crease between Aziraphale’s brows, a visible manifestation of his intense concentration as his fingers move in and out of Crowley, and his heart swells. He cups the angel’s face – he blinks rapidly, as though coming out of a trance – and draws him down into a kiss.

“Whenever you’re ready, angel.”

Crowley watches as Aziraphale takes hold of himself and shuffles closer. He’s struck with a sudden sense of nervousness that sits heavy in his belly and can’t help tensing up as he feels Aziraphale’s cock nudge against him. He has a second to think that maybe this had been a mistake when Aziraphale pushes inside him and Crowley is suddenly so full and then all his doubts are gone.

“Yesss,” he hisses as Aziraphale sheathes himself completely, the angel’s eyes hooded and his mouth open on a silent groan. Crowley’s toes curl and he reaches out to pull Aziraphale closer, hands scrambling to find a hold on the soft flesh of his angel’s body. He sinks his fingers into Aziraphale’s hips like sinking them into an over-ripe peach and urges him to _move_.

This is new, too. Crowley has had four millennia of he and his body being present but distant from the human condition. It doesn’t need all the things real bodies need to survive, or suffer the common trivialities or deeper afflictions they do. He physically requires neither sustenance, shelter, sex nor sleep (although he has gladly submitted to the latter for pure enjoyment’s sake). With Aziraphale inside him, he feels more human than he ever has before. He is full of love and yearning, no longer an idle bystander in the drama that is human history. This is _his_ and _only his_. Neither God nor Lucifer nor any of the other idiots out there can take it from him. He understands so much more deeply why humans do what they do if this is the feeling they’re fighting for.

As Aziraphale rocks into him, he gets a hand around himself and lets each jolt of Aziraphale’s hips smacking against him rock him forward into that grip. After millennia of questioning God’s _ineffable_ decisions, Crowley praises Her for the perfection She crafted in human bodies, to be able to give and take pleasure at the same time, a mutual joining unlike any Crowley has ever experienced.

“Yes, angel,” Crowley moans and wants to say so much more. He wishes he could open the floodgates of his mind and let it all pour out freely into Aziraphale’s head, a perfect complement to the faultless melding of their bodies. There are things he wants the angel to know, things that can’t be communicated in human speech. Perhaps it would have been possible, _before_ , but it’s all a bit of a blur now and Crowley can’t bring himself to regret Falling if it brought him to this.

The tiles beneath him scratch up his back with every thrust of Aziraphale’s hips but Crowley can hardly find it in him to care. The angel’s head is bowed, his eyes shut. There’s a sheen of sweat that glistens across his chest and forehead, and he’s panting like he’s run a mile. Crowley reaches up and pushes Aziraphale’s damp curls off his face.

_You’re beautiful_ , he thinks. Aziraphale can stop him from saying it, but he can’t stop him from thinking it.

As Crowley’s hands map the curves of the angel’s face, Aziraphale’s eyes open and a look of shock flashes through them. For a second Crowley fears he’s said the words aloud and upset him. But then Aziraphale’s hips stutter and he pushes into Crowley once, twice, three times more and stills, a low groan coming out of him.

He blankets Crowley’s body with his own as he pants and twitches through the aftermath of his orgasm; Crowley clings to him, arms and legs both, bare skin to bare skin, and feels settled, happy exactly where he is.

He’s only half-hard but it seems inconsequential now. He’s warm, loved, and sleep is itchy at the corners of his eyes. He feels a kiss against his forehead and then Aziraphale is moving, getting up and drawing Crowley up with him.

“There’s a bedroom in here,” says Aziraphale, even as he guides Crowley inside.

All at once, the trials of the day catch up with him. Crowley’s body is heavy and when he sees the bed he flops into it with a satisfied groan. The mattress warmly welcomes his tired body and then a blanket is being placed over him.

Crowley reaches out blindly until he catches the retreating arm and then, peeking out through bleary eyes, asks, “Stay with me?”

Aziraphale doesn’t reply in words but the bed dips and a breeze of air caresses Crowley’s skin as the covers are lifted to admit another body. Crowley reaches out, drawn to the warmth, and wraps himself around the angel.

“Sorry’m so bony,” he mutters, his mouth rubbery.

Then he falls into a deep, dreamless sleep, arms clinging and his face nestled into the hollow of Aziraphale’s collarbone.

When he awakes again, he is cold and alone. It’s still dark outside. The world tilts and tilts and tilts again when he sits up. He stays still as the afterimages resolve themselves into a singular reality, the cold of the tiles under his feet a grounding influence. He has the beginning of a headache and his mouth feels alive.

He climbs from the bed, not bothering to find his clothing, and begins to explore the house in search of his angel. He goes to the kitchen first because Aziraphale seems to have committed wholeheartedly to this new eating thing and he’s heard humans talk often enough about late night snacks. He’s not there, though, so Crowley keeps going until he catches sight of a dark silhouette against the moonlight filtering into the atrium, missed on his first walkthrough.

“Aziraphale?” he calls.

The angel’s wings are out. Crowley hasn’t seen them in four thousand years and they’re luminous with moonlight as he approaches. The sight of them throws him back into the past – not only back to the walls of Eden but further back still, to the war and beyond. His own had shone that brightly once.

Another time, another life.

Gone now.

As Crowley gets closer, the play of light and shadow resolves itself into shapes and he realises the tiles at Aziraphale’s feat are covered with a smattering of feathers. Pure white feathers.

“Aziraphale?” he calls again, confused and wary.

“Why did you have to be nice?”

“What?” Crowley approaches him slowly. “What are you going on about, angel?”

“You shouldn’t be nice.”

“Angel, what’s wrong?”

“All those people, Crowley.” Aziraphale turns to him and there’s nothing but a wild madness behind his eyes. “All those _children_. For nothing!”

“Wha—” Crowley gets halfway through the word before his drunk, sleepy brain catches up with what Aziraphale said. He remembers that day. The air heavy with dark promise as the rainclouds converged above them.

_Not the kids? You can’t kill kids_.

“You didn’t do that, angel. It was Her.”

“But I let it happen. I knew what She was going to do and I didn’t do anything. I knew about the flood, and the tower, and the plagues and I didn’t do a damn thing.”

“Angel…”

“Her own son!” His voice changes to an accusatory whisper. “She did that to Her own son! And for what? Without you or me around, they’d still go on killing each other needlessly for centuries to come.”

It’s unsettling to hear Crowley’s own thoughts echoed back at him. It’s one thing for a demon to doubt, a whole other thing for an angel.

“Come on, angel, you can’t know that.”

“But I do! Nothing we do makes a lick of difference. Maybe Lucifer was right in the end.” Crowley is so physically startled by that admission, he takes a step backwards. He immediately regrets it. “You’re certainly nicer to me than anyone in Heaven. Maybe I am on the wrong side.”

“Don’t say that.” Crowley bridges the gap between them and reaches out for Aziraphale. The angel pulls away and it _hurts_. He resorts to words. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. You haven’t seen Hell. You haven’t been around demons. If you had, you’d know for sure you were on the right side.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore! I thought I could”—Aziraphale breaks off, clawing at his wings. Crowley rushes forward and it takes all of his strength to stop him from pulling out more of his feathers— “but they’re still white! She doesn’t care!”

Crowley is scared.

He had been scared leading up to his Fall. He’d only wanted some answers, not full blown civil war and eternal punishment. The unknown was the worst. There was no precedent to Lucifer’s rebellion. Complete annihilation seemed as likely a possibility as any other. Banishment had hardly been a walk in the park but it had been a damn sight better than the other options he’d predicted.

Now, for the second time in his life, he’s faced with the dreadful unknown.

Aziraphale isn’t supposed to falter. They both have their role to play and they’ve played them to perfection for four thousand years. The pure angel and his evil adversary.

It’s irrational but Crowley feels betrayed beneath his shock. Aziraphale isn’t supposed to let him down like this. He’s meant to be stalwart and strong in his beliefs. If he’s not, then the whole dynamic shifts. Crowley pictures their association as a cart, balancing upon the precipice of a hill. Crowley is the one who pushes it forward over the edge and Aziraphale is meant to be the one who puts on the brake so it’s a controlled descent. But Aziraphale is currently letting them careen downhill, allowing them to pick up speed and lose all control. Disaster is imminent.

The metaphor isn’t perfect but it’s the best Crowley can conjure up in his current state. He’s suddenly aware of his nudity and feels foolish. Aziraphale is naked too, but with his wings out, it doesn’t feel like he is.

“Angel, you should sober up,” Crowley suggests. “It’ll all make more sense when you’re sober.”

“I am sober!”

And Crowley realises too late that he is. He hurries to catch up.

The alcohol leaves his system and while it’s a relief, it doesn’t instantly give him any answers. He’s still as clueless as he’d been half-drunk but now his fear is knife-sharp.

In hindsight, there had been an undercurrent of wrongness throughout the whole night that drunk-Crowley had dismissed repeatedly. The pattern becomes more obvious now he’s in full control of his faculties. This isn’t a momentary madness. Aziraphale has been building to this.

Crowley can’t deal with it.

That admission brings with it a bitter taste of guilt but Crowley swallows it down. He knows at once that he’s right and it’s freeing. He doesn’t think there is anything he can do or say right at this moment that will change Aziraphale’s mind or make anything better. In fact, he’s liable to make it worse.

He has to get away, give himself some time and space to regroup. He’s no use to Aziraphale in his current state.

“Listen,” he says, reaching out and taking Aziraphale’s hand, holding on even when the angel tries to pull it away, “I’ve got to nip out, get this temptation done. Why don’t you take it easy and I’ll be back in a few hours. A few hours might be all you need to get your head back on straight.”

It’s a weak excuse but Crowley really is at a loss as to how to deal with the angel’s current emotional turmoil. For four thousand years he’s watched as God has done all kinds of messed up things and Aziraphale has waved it away as _ineffable_. Why, after one night with Crowley – a night that Crowley had thought went pretty well, actually, if he does say so himself – is he suddenly having an existential crisis?

So, like a coward, Crowley dresses quickly and sneaks away into the pre-dawn streets. The sun’s not even up yet so he wanders aimlessly for hours, every now and again encountering someone about their business. He walks through the markets as they awaken with the rising of the sun. He stops to admire produce and listens to the buyers haggle with the sellers. Young children, dirty little gangs of them, haunt the streets. Crowley watches them, their quick eyes and clever fingers as they move through the crowds. He remembers other children, wide-eyed and panicked as the waters rose.

He blinks away the memory and miracles extra silver into his coin purse as one of the children passes by and cuts the strings.

Once the sun is high in the sky, Crowley attends to his temptation. It’s not a hard job but Crowley draws it out. There’s a sickness in his mind he’s never experienced before, a gnawing, heavy feeling, and, for the first time in his existence, the future is a thing of pure fear and crippling uncertainty. Even after he’d been thrown from Heaven, he’d felt more optimistic than this.

If he doesn’t go back to Aziraphale’s house, he won’t have to deal with whatever epiphany the angel is currently having – but if he doesn’t go back, there’s also no saying what Aziraphale will do left alone in his current state. Crowley couldn’t face that – but he’s not ready to face the angel yet, either.

He goes back to the bar they’d met in the previous day and orders a house brown. He reasons that maybe a bit of alcohol will give him the courage he needs. A woman across the bar catches his eye and he knows instantly that he could take her home and bed her. Angels may be able to sense love but demons can feel lust and it’s practically rolling off the woman in waves. Crowley feels sick to his stomach. He ignores her. Instead, he sits there and tries to figure out what went wrong.

Aziraphale had been happy enough when they’d met up yesterday, and he’d seemed fine during dinner and drinks. Friendlier than usual, yes, but they had been getting closer the more they met up over the years. So much so, Aziraphale’s overtures the night before had been a surprise but not wholly unexpected. If Crowley had known the affection was mutual, he might have tried something years ago.

There had been some evasion, though. Aziraphale had been noncommittal with his answers several times during the night, avoiding some questions outright, and Crowley had let it slide. In his drunkenness and happiness he’d thought it was unimportant. Now he wishes he’d pushed a little harder.

The day cools off as the sun dips below the horizon and Crowley admits to himself that it’s now or never. He’s no closer to feeling out the truth of the situation but sitting here drinking isn’t going to change that. With great hesitation he slips from the seat he’s occupied for hours and heads back out onto the street.

It’s not such a long walk to Aziraphale’s house but Crowley drags his feet. He wishes he’d never come to Rome. 

“Angel?” Crowley calls out as he shuts the front door behind him.

No answer is forthcoming but he finds Aziraphale where he left him.

His wings are still out but now there are candles around him and a sigil written upon the floor.

“How are you doing, angel?”

“Crowley?” Aziraphale turns to look at him and his eyes are red-rimmed and raw.

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“She won’t talk to me.”

“Oh, angel.” Crowley knows how that feels. He’d tried a couple of times, _after_ , to get Her to talk to him and all he’d been met with was silence. It was a terrible thing to go from feeling completely loved and cared for to being cast off and alone. He still tries, every now and again, when the humans get a bit too much, but there’s still no reply forthcoming. Crowley settles his arm around Aziraphale’s shoulder and pulls them close together. “It’s not a personal thing. I don’t think She talks to anyone anymore.”

“Then what’s the point?”

Crowley wishes he could give the angel the answers he needs but he’s been searching for them himself since even before his Fall and never really had any luck. It might be easy to spew platitudes about everything happening for some _ineffable_ reason but he owes the angel more than that.

“I don’t know,” he answers simply.

Aziraphale makes a kind of wet, choking sound. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Then just keep ignoring them.” Crowley lifts a hand and sweeps back the curls from Aziraphale’s forehead. “Take some time off and try to work it out.”

“No.” Aziraphale disentangles himself from Crowley’s arm, more forcefully than necessary, and puts distance between them. Crowley feels that same manic energy from this morning building inside the angel, as obvious and foreboding as black clouds on the horizon. “I don’t want to do _any_ of it anymore.”

And although he knows better, Crowley has to ask: “Angel, what do you mean?” 

Aziraphale’s eyes are wild as he says, “You can get me hellfire.”

Crowley’s entire body goes cold and he reels back in horror.

There’s not much that will kill them, and even less that will keep them dead.

Hellfire will do the trick for an angel.

Gone. Completely erased.

No more hidden smiles. No more dusky evenings sharing a drink. No more constants in a transient world.

“You don’t know what you’re asking me,” says Crowley. He wants to rail and rave. At who? Aziraphale? God? He doesn’t know. He grits his teeth instead.

“I know exactly what I’m asking you.” Aziraphale looks him straight in the eye and he can’t hold that gaze for more than a few seconds. Crowley looks aside in shame. Aziraphale tries to reach for him then but Crowley pulls away. The flash of hurt in Aziraphale’s eyes is like a hand around his heart, squeezing the life out of him. “Please, Crowley, I want it to stop. I want to be gone. These last 8 years have been hell.”

“Angel… Please. I can’t do it. Don’t ask me to do it.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale prostrates himself before Crowley, clutches at his feet and looks up at him with pleading eyes, dewy and bright with tears, “please, make it go away.”

Crowley is a moment away from crying himself.

He kneels down and gathers the angel to him. So warm and alive.

He can’t. He would do anything for Aziraphale but not this.

He tries to gather himself but his voice still comes out shaky as he admits what he’s always been too afraid to put into words before: “You’re my best friend.” Aziraphale’s face slips then, just for a second, before it hardens again in resolve. Crowley doesn’t want to beg but he’s desperate; he can’t help but try. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

“Crowley…” Aziraphale pleads.

“No!” He can’t help shouting it. He feels like he’s borrowed a little of Aziraphale’s madness but there seems no other way to get through this. Call it selfish, but if Aziraphale isn’t in the world then Crowley doesn’t want to be either. So Aziraphale has to live, because being alive together, however imperfect, is better than eternal nothingness apart. “I won’t help you kill yourself. I can’t. I can’t.”

“You don’t understand what it’s like. These thoughts….”

The anguish in Aziraphale’s voice is hard to listen to. It calls to something in Crowley, something from _before_. A desire to help and heal that Hell hasn’t managed to strip him of. He’s not equipped to heal, though. He’s a demon. He’s only good for trickery, temptations, taking not giving.

“What if I…” Crowley begins, even as the idea forms, “what if I took them away?”

Crowley is grasping at straws and even Aziraphale can tell.

“How?” he asks, dubious.

But Crowley is like a dog with a bone. “I don’t know,” he admits, even as his brain kicks into overdrive. It seems like a logical sort of plan: if Aziraphale’s thoughts are the cause of this, why shouldn’t he cut them out like a tumour? “What if I just, I don’t know, took some bits out? Made you forget some things?”

“Can you do that?”

“Theoretically.”

“And if it doesn’t work?”

Crowley knows what he has to say, even though he’d rather kill himself than go through with this promise. It’s part of the contract, though, and so he must. In a way, it feels like security. He has to succeed. The alternative is too horrific to contemplate.

“I’ll get you what you want.”

“Alright.”

Even as Aziraphale agrees, Crowley’s not entirely confident he can do what he’s offered. It’s not a miracle he’s ever tried before. It’s more akin to surgery than his usual parlour tricks. It’s not a question of ability though; if he doesn’t accomplish this, something worse will happen. Therefore, he has to do it.

Crowley shudders to think of what would happen if Aziraphale got desperate enough to approach another demon with his request for hellfire. Beelzebub would probably award a commendation to a demon who managed to so thoroughly annihilate an enemy angel – by his own request even! There would be celebrations down in Hell for weeks.

No. Either he does this and succeeds, or he’ll deal with the aftermath if he fails. It’s the least he can do for Aziraphale, to not leave him alone at the end.

Crowley takes a steadying breath and then asks, “Are you ready?”

“Please,” begs Aziraphale and kisses him. Crowley can’t bring himself to kiss the angel back, even though he knows this might be his last chance. The kiss feels like a goodbye. Aziraphale’s lips tastes like ashes.

When Aziraphale draws back, Crowley catches his eyes and then snatches the thread of his thoughts as they unravel, follows it back, back to last night, back even to 8 years ago. It takes all of his effort to find that first initial spark of doubt that had grown and grown like a horrible tumour into this feverish wish for nothingness. He chases it through the years and sees where he can cut or massage, just enough to get this sickness out of Aziraphale.

When the path is mapped, he cradles Aziraphale’s skull in his hands and tells him, “You will wake, having had a lovely dream about whatever you like best.”

"Thank you,” Aziraphale reaches out wildly and grasps at his arms, “thank you.”

“Please don’t say that,” Crowley begs, even as he strikes a spark to the pathways of Aziraphale’s memories and watches them burn. He may as well have not spoken; Aziraphale’s eyes have already slipped closed and he can no longer hear his plea.


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley goes by Aziraphale’s house the next morning.

“Just wanted to make sure you were alright,” he says, eyeing the angel off from behind his glasses. “You were pretty drunk when I dropped you off.”

Standing in the doorway, Aziraphale squints against the light but otherwise looks none the worse for wear. “I’m sorry to say I don’t remember much of last night. I suppose I should thank you for looking after me.”

_Thank you, thank you._

“Don’t,” Crowley growls. The strength and speed of his grief takes him momentarily by surprise and he has to choke back a sob.

A look of confusion passes across Aziraphale’s face but Crowley can see the minute he shrugs it off. He’s bubbly and bumbling, his usual self – and so completely different to how he’d been the day before. “Do you know,” he says, confidingly, and with a hint of scandal in his voice, “I even fell asleep! How about that!”

He laughs, a quiet little chuckle, hands clasped over his midsection, looking at Crowley with his beautiful open smile and Crowley dies inside. And because he’s a sucker for punishment, he asks, “Nice dreams?”

Aziraphale’s eyes go soft and distant, and Crowley doesn’t think he realises he’s doing it but he lifts his hand, and his fingers stop just centimetres away from his lips. Lips Crowley had been allowed to kiss last night. Lips he’ll never be allowed to kiss ever again. “Yes, very nice.”

It hurts. Hurts like a physical pain, like being stabbed. Crowley wonders what (or who, his treacherous brain supplies) Aziraphale dreamt of to make him go all wobbly like that and why couldn’t it have been Crowley?

A day ago and it had been _his_ lips on the angel’s, _his_ hands that got to reach out and hold, _his_ body that Aziraphale had sought his pleasure in. He physically aches to recapture those freedoms – but it isn’t to be. Aziraphale had made his regret plenty clear, and Crowley had done what needed to be done to fix it. That thought is no comfort.

Nevertheless, he can deal with this.

Crowley takes a steadying breath.

He can meet up with the angel every couple of decades, himself burdened with the weight of remembering and Aziraphale a blissful blank slate, and they can share in drinks and conversations and it will be enough. It will all go back to how it was and he can deal with that.

Oh, who is he kidding.

“Would you like to do lunch?” asks Aziraphale as Crowley uses every shred of his resolve not to break down crying.

“Nah,” Crowley answers, voice wavering and he prays – _prays!_ – that Aziraphale doesn’t hear it. “I’ve got some things to do.”

“Oh, yes. Of course.” Crowley thinks there is regret in Aziraphale’s voice but he knows he’s only hearing what he wants to. “That temptation you mentioned.”

“Yeah, something like that.”

An awkward little silence falls.

“Well, I suppose I’ll see you around then.”

“Sure,” says Crowley, lightly. Dismissively. Like this is any other day. He turns and he starts to walk away.

“Crowley?”

And there is pain in Aziraphale’s voice, not just imagined this time, the hurt there on display like a flensing knife has been taken to it, teasing the artifice from the reality with practised ease to leave it flayed bare. It’s raw and painful and Crowley aches to hear it.

But he can’t turn around. If he turns around, he won’t be able to go. He musters all the fake cheer he can and says, “Goodbye, angel,” with a quick wave of his hand over his shoulder.

He leaves before he starts crying on the spot, and then he gets away from Aziraphale’s house as quickly as he can and he doesn’t stop. He leaves Rome and then keeps going – always on the move, by horse or cart or even walking when he has to – until he’s no longer in the Roman Empire anymore. Considering how expansive it is, that’s no mean feat.

He loses himself in the forests north-east of the empire, following rivers when the roads give out. Giant horned beasts lumber past him as he delves further into the sea of trees. Their massive heads hang low on thick shoulders and their breath floats in the air, ghostly and intangible. They regard him with quiet curiosity before moving on.

When he’s well and truly separated from the conveniences of civilisation, he finds a small lake where he can see the sky, merely a break in the encompassing canopy of the forest, and he camps out there with a never-ending bottle of wine and proceeds to get disastrously drunk. So disastrously drunk, in fact, that he almost gives in to the desire to go running back to Rome. It’s only the logistics that stop him. Instead, he lies down in the middle of the creaking forest, the soft noises of insects and animals around him, and looks up on what he created.

_Lovely, really very lovely._

If Crowley lets his mind wander, he can almost imagine the warm puff of breath against his ear as Aziraphale speaks those words to him. It seems so real. He rolls onto his side, into phantom warmth and the prickle of pine needles. He can still feel every place Aziraphale touched him; they burn bright and hot like starlight. He traces those constellations with his own fingers, presses into them and feels himself harden.

_Oh._

He’d forgotten about that.

He supposes he should will it away. He doesn’t need it anymore. As wonderful and right as it had felt at the time, giving into those humanly pleasures had brought nothing good into his life. Had fucked it up worse than anything else he’d ever consciously done, even – and that’s saying something.

He should make it disappear and erase the memories as cleanly as he’d erased Aziraphale’s own.

Instead, he rolls over until he’s balanced on his knees, chest and face crushed into the forest floor, and ruts into his hand like a wild beast. He chases the completion he hadn’t experience that night, as though something as pathetic as an orgasm could somehow draw a line under the last fortnight and make him able to face the future with acceptance.

It doesn’t take long. Memories of Aziraphale are still fresh in his mind, and as much as it hurts to think of him, he can’t deny that his thoughts are treacherous, slippery things that want nothing more than to live in his pain, revelling in it like a pig in mud.

His seed soon stripes the forest floor but it doesn’t make anything better.

As Crowley’s breathing slows, shame creeps in.

He wills his sex away and all the mess it has entailed, and collapses onto his back.

He can’t go on like this.

He looks up at the firmament and the stars seem mocking now.

“Why couldn’t you’ve just talked to him? Told him it was all fine, just part of your _ineffable_ plan?” he entreats the limitless heavens. He knows no answer is forthcoming so he doesn’t wait for one. If God isn’t speaking to Aziraphale, She sure as hell isn’t speaking to Crowley. “A little white lie never hurt anyone.”

The silence, while expected, is no less demoralising. The only reply he gets is the constant chirruping of insects and the soughing of the wind through the trees. If there is an answer in that soft symphony, he can’t parse it. Crowley throws his arm over his eyes, blocking from view the starlight. “Why can’t I ever have something good?”

He stays in the woods for weeks, doing a whole lot of nothing but moping. Even he can admit that. He spends hours staring out across the lake he slowly comes to think of as his own, allowing the sadness to ferment within him into a potent elixir. He cries until he can’t anymore, then he rests and drinks and cries again. The tears do seem to bring back some kind of internal equilibrium to him; each one shed brings the scale a little closer to balanced.

When he emerges from the woods, he’s pressed the hurt down. He’s made it small and compressed, like a black hole of emotion threatening to consume his whole being. This is fine.

He’s made some resolutions. If Aziraphale is no longer to be a part of his life, then all he has is his work. He doesn’t enjoy it beyond creating trifling inconveniences for the humans but, like it or not, it’s going to have to sustain him for the rest of eternity. It’s not as if he has an alternative.

So he throws himself into the work with a diligence he’s never exhibited before. While half of his reports for the last four centuries have been hot air and white lies, now they’re the absolute truth. If Hell tells him to cause some mischief, he goes above and beyond what’s expected of him. It brings him no satisfaction, but it does keep him busy and his thoughts away from a certain angel.

Thinking about Aziraphale makes Crowley feel like someone has their hand in his chest, squeezing his heart within an inch of its life. It’s the worst kind of pain because neither miracles, nor ointments, nor time make it hurt less. It stings as sharply a decade after the fact as it did the day of. It gives him new insight into the humans. What a cruel trick it was that God played on them, to give them the capacity to love and mourn. Better to be heartless and unmoved by sentiment like the hosts of Heaven and Hell. At times, Crowley wonders if he isn’t the only creature of angelic stock who has ever felt this way. The thought makes him feel incredibly lonely.

So he works and he sleeps and he longs for hands he can’t hold and lips he can’t kiss and arms he can’t wrap himself up in; and he doesn’t go to the places where Aziraphale might be and he doesn’t ask about the angel and if anyone mentions his name, Crowley makes himself scarce. He knows that’s cowardly but why would a person willingly present himself to be pierced through with the metaphorical arrows of unrequited love?

He travels widely, but eventually finds that he has a penchant for the people and lands of Britannia. Hell doesn’t care if he settles down. As long as there are humans around, he can be put to work.

*****

Crowley quickly discovers that eternity is a long time to spend without company, though. He tries to stave off the loneliness; with humans at first but that never works out. One moment they’re here and the next they’re dead. It leaves a sour taste in Crowley’s mouth. So he goes down to Hell and mills about with Dagon, Hastur and Ligur. Hell is as it’s always been: crowded, noisy and foul-smelling. He brings down a few bottles of the best wine he can find to recapture a little of what he and Aziraphale had.

The demons eye them with disdain. Then they eye him with disdain. Not that he regards them any better. He doesn’t mean to judge or whatever, but their inability to adapt to the human world is a strike against them, as far as he’s concerned. He can’t help but compare their general filthiness to someone else. Someone clean and nice smelling. Someone who might wear centuries-old clothing, but always makes sure they’re properly washed.

He can’t think like that.

So he takes a mouthful of the wine and then holds out the bottle in offering.

“You drink?” asks Ligur with open disgust.

“Yeah,” says Crowley, feeling defensive. Drinking’s a lovely pastime and he feels offended on its behalf. “Why not?”

“Because we’re _demons_ ,” answers Dagon and promptly leaves. Off to file some more records or something else not fun. What a downer.

Hastur drinks from one of the bottles like it’s a flagon of water and then promptly spits it out upon the floor. The frog on his head looks even greener, if that’s possible. “You drink _this_?”

Crowley swipes the bottle from his hand, picks up the rest of the bottles and stomps off.

“Bugger the lot of you.”

It only makes it doubly clear the difference between Aziraphale’s bonhomie and their complete lack of. He should have known it was a terrible idea. Crowley aches for companionship.

*****

He’s reporting to Beelzebub – nothing particularly interesting, just the usual hijinks – when there’s a lull in the conversation and without really thinking about it, Crowley asks, “D’you think the apocalypse will happen soon?”

“What?” They flicks their eyes from the paperwork up to him. “Sick of earth already?”

And he wants to scream that he had loved earth and he had loved people and most importantly he had loved a particular angel until he’d gone and ruined it all but he bites down hard so it can’t come out and instead says, “It’s all a bit tedious.”

“It’ll happen when it happens,” They shrug, sending the swarm of flies that was on their shoulders buzzing about crazily. “It’s not like She lets anyone in on her plans.”

“They’re _ineffable_ ,” Crowley has said before he even realises the words are out of his mouth.

*****

Half a century from their last meeting, the pain of that night still fresh in his mind, he’s already manically desperate to see the angel again. A kind voice with the right pedantic tone throws him instantly back into the past and the sight of a pure blond head of hair in a crowd can send him spiralling into depression for days.

Crowley has reinstalled his genitalia by this point, switching it up on a whim to match his physical presentation. He figures that if he has to carry the memories of his night with Aziraphale alone then there may as well be some consolation, however bittersweet his orgasms are. He always feels terrible afterwards, once the paroxysm has passed, but it never stops him from attempting it again a week, a month or a year down the track.

He’s in Patmos on the trail of information when he runs into Aziraphale quite by chance.

By the time he realises who he’s bumped into, it’s too late for Crowley to get out of the situation without being obvious. In that moment when he realises escape is impossible, Crowley also admits to himself that he doesn’t want to escape. Not anymore. Aziraphale smiles at him and it’s like the sun breaking out from behind the clouds. Crowley feels it as a physical pain. “Hello, Crowley.”

“Angel.” He inclines his head in a nod of acknowledgement.

“What brings you to this part of the world?”

“Heard John’s got over his writer’s block.”

“Oh, yes.” Aziraphale gestures behind him towards a cave. “He’s been at it for days and he’s not nearly finished. You’d have time for lunch, if you’re free.”

Although not explicitly stated, it’s obviously an invitation to dine with Aziraphale.

And he really shouldn’t, he knows it’s a bad idea, fuel on the fire, but—

“I suppose I could spare a few minutes,” Crowley answers.

He doesn’t know if it’s the right choice – but it certainly feels like it is when Aziraphale turns that smile onto him.

“I’ve missed you quite a bit, I’m afraid to say,” says Aziraphale, leading him towards the market. “I thought you must have been avoiding me.”

“Nah,” says Crowley, swallowing guilt, “just been busy lately.”

Aziraphale gives him a look that feels condescending. A look that says _oh, you rascally old serpent, you_. Crowley should feel offended. He just feels fond.

“You’d better not tell me about it or I might have to do something to stop you.”

“Maybe I will tell you. Then we might see each other a bit more.”

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, Crowley knows it’s too forward. Aziraphale doesn’t want him like that. He’d made that more than abundantly clear. He wishes time travel was one of his powers. He could go back and slap himself before he made a fool of himself with his longing.

But Aziraphale doesn’t look concerned. In fact, he looks pleased, with a bit of colour high up on his cheeks.

They walk the rest of the way to the market in silence and Aziraphale directs them like he’s quite familiar with the area. When they get where they’re going, Crowley lets the angel order for them both, knowing full well he’s not going to touch his own food.

The fact that Aziraphale is still eating seems to Crowley like an ominous sign. He’s had time to think about it over the years, and Aziraphale’s hedonism seems to have been a warning sign he’d missed at the time. In hindsight it was so obvious. He was trying out sins like people in the future would try out free samples at Costco. 

“Been keeping busy since we last met?” Aziraphale extends his spoon with a morsel of food on it towards Crowley. “No, thanks.”

“I have.” The spoon goes into Aziraphale’s mouth and Crowley aches to chase it. “I’ve been keeping an eye on this new church, trying to keep their spirits up. It hasn’t been easy for them, the poor things. The whole world’s against them.”

“Has John written anything interesting yet?”

Aziraphale shakes his head from side to side. “Some jabs at Nero and Rome.”

“Nero?” repeats Crowley in disbelief. “Hasn’t he been dead for a few decades now?”

“Yes, but there’s always a new Nero.”

Crowley takes a sip of his drink. “Isn’t that the truth.”

“John does speak about the end of the world, of the coming of the four horsemen.”

Now that is more to Crowley’s interest. “Do you suppose it’s true? Four horsemen of the apocalypse does seem like Her kind of pageantry.”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Only, She doesn’t seem to be too talkative these days,” says Crowley. “Not since, you know…”

He doesn’t know if he means since the war, or the wall, or since the night Aziraphale doesn’t remember when he had cried out for Her in his hour of deepest need and She had not answered.

“No.”

They lapse into a sad silence.

*****

They go back to their regular meetups then. They’re never organised in advance but somehow Aziraphale and Crowley can’t seem to go a century without tripping over each other at least once.

When they find themselves facing off against each other, dressed in the most impractical but stylish armour known to sixth century Englishmen, both having a miserable time and only cancelling each other out for all the effort they’ve both put in, Crowley comes up with a brilliant plan.

Aziraphale makes the usual argument about _me good, you bad_ but Crowley can see the temptation in his eyes. They’ve known each other long enough that Crowley knows his angel has taken to hedonism like a duck to water. Crowley no longer thinks it’s a symptom of something bigger and worrisome. For whatever reason, Aziraphale has simply found that he enjoys the comforts of human life. He likes to eat, he likes to drink, he likes to enjoy music and dance and stories. He’d be happier if he didn’t have to trudge through mud for days in clanking armour to accomplish fuck-all.

So Aziraphale says he’ll never consider it but Crowley knows it’s only a matter of time before he sees the wisdom of the proposed arrangement.

*****

The next time they meet up, Aziraphale begins the conversation with, “About that arrangement you mentioned last time…” and the rest, as they say, is history.

*****

In the fifteenth century Crowley receives a commendation, as he sometimes does, for something that wasn’t his doing.

He goes to see exactly what wickedness he’s supposedly the cause of and then spends the next couple of weeks in a constant state of intoxication. Worse even than he’d been after erasing Aziraphale’s memories. Damn humans and their cleverness.

Long stretches of time are lost to hungry blackness and he welcomes the periods of oblivion with open arms. If he was mortal, he would be dead – but his vessel is made of hardier stuff. All the better to prolong the suffering.

When he sleeps, he sleeps in the dirt. His clothing rots on his body. People spit at him as they walk by. He curses back at them.

It’s Aziraphale who eventually finds him and his cool hand on Crowley’s forehead brings him out of his madness. He thinks it’s the most blessed thing he’s ever felt.

“What have you done to yourself?” Aziraphale asks in a sad voice but Crowley is beyond answering.

Aziraphale is so close, the closest Crowley’s let him get since _that_ night. The fifteenth century smells of shit and piss and death but Aziraphale smells clean and so like himself. Crowley’s cunt clenches as the memory of that smell washes over him.

Then the smell of burning flesh comes uninvited to his nose and any desire he had is extinguished. He turns to the side and empties his stomach into the gutter.

Aziraphale manhandles him into a sitting position and strokes the lank, dirty hair from his face. If Crowley had his wits about him, he might feel ashamed at the dishevelled state Aziraphale has found him in. Luckily, he’s drowned that small nagging voice of his conscience with a constant stream of alcohol. His angel lifts a skin of water to his lips and Crowley drinks from it greedily.

Aziraphale’s lips are so tempting close to his own. But as drunk as he is, he’s still not drunk enough to think that’s a good idea. Never again.

“Why are they like this?” he moans.

“I don’t know, dear.” The faintest brush of lips against his forehead. “Do think you can stand?”

Aziraphale helps him up off the ground and takes him somewhere. He stays with him as he shakes apart, teeth chattering as tears stream down his cheeks and his breath hitches. He doesn’t complain when Crowley vomits all over his clothes or when Crowley grips him so hard his fingernails leave crescent-shaped indents in Aziraphale’s skin that last for hours.

When, one morning god knows how long after Aziraphale picked him up off the street, Crowley wakes up and feels better – physically, at least – he flees from the house without seeing Aziraphale.

They never mention it.

*****

“I feel like you’re hiding something from me.”

Crowley makes an enquiring noise as he takes another drink of his wine.

“Not work-related, I think,” says Aziraphale, cutting his suet pudding into bite-sized slices. “It’s been going on too long. But I can’t think what it could be otherwise.” He pops a slice of pudding in his mouth and chews thoughtfully. “What’s your secret?”

Crowley reclines back in his seat, taking off his glasses and throwing them haphazardly onto the table, then cocks his head and studies Aziraphale.

“Why do you think I have a secret?”

“You seem… reserved. Have done for a few centuries now.”

“Maybe I’m just tired,” Crowley says with a shrug. And it’s not exactly a lie. “We’ve been doing this a long time, angel.”

“That is true.”

Aziraphale goes back to enjoying his pudding and Crowley watches him.

“Do you think it’ll end soon?”

Aziraphale doesn’t seem at all surprised by the question. “It’s not for me to say… or to wonder.”

“It’s _ineffable_.”

Aziraphale puts down his fork and staples his hands together over his soft belly and smiles, as though pleased that Crowley is coming around to his thinking. “Quite right.”

Crowley doesn’t have the heart to tell him he was being sarcastic.

*****

In the future, when Aziraphale asks him about it, Crowley always adamantly answers that he had only ever wanted holy water to protect himself from the other inhabitants of Hell.

This is not true.

Crowley had had every intention of killing himself.

Sometimes things just get to be a bit too much. The humans keep doing increasingly horrible things to each other, so horrible in fact that Crowley feels redundant most of the time. He can’t compete with modern warfare and slavery and wilful savagery.

That in itself might be fine, but there are days when he feels sharply the fact that Aziraphale is so repulsed by his very being that he’d rather sacrifice his memories than remember a moment of intimacy between them. That is a constant sharp sting like a papercut that never heals.

One evening, after he’s saved Aziraphale from the guillotine and the angel has treated him to a lunch he neither orders nor eats, after they’ve spent a pleasant evening filling each other in on what they’ve been doing since they last saw each other, Crowley thinks, _I can’t do this anymore_.

The thought is insidious and plays on repeat in the back of his mind all that night and the next day. The future suddenly seems overwhelming and endless. Aziraphale will never love him, Hell will keep trying to make him do horrible things, and the humans – without any input from Crowley – will do horribler ones. He can’t do it.

He suddenly understands something of the madness that had overtaken Aziraphale that night so long ago. His continued existence is untenable.

He hadn’t let Aziraphale do it, though, and that thought is enough to give him pause.

A sleep. Yes, a sleep, then.

A bit of nothingness would do him good.

So he lets himself be coddled in the sweet embrace of Morpheus for half a century.

But when he wakes, nothing is better. There are still wars and cruelty and injustices. Pain and misery are shipped wholesale around the world. Greed and selfishness and gluttony prevail. Crowley is not needed. No demon is needed. Give these people the world and they will make hell on earth.

He asks Aziraphale for a favour. He is rejected outright.

So he sticks around and waits. He can see monumental change on the horizon and he’s not mistaken. Industrialisation and technology completely change the world. He yearns for some sign of hope, some scrap of evidence that shows She is watching over and taking care of her people.

Then there is a war, a horrible war. _The war to end all wars_ , they say.

And yet, somehow, not even 20 years pass and an even more devastating war is fought. If Crowley had known the full extent of it when he walked into that church to save Aziraphale, he wouldn’t have simply admired the baptismal font; he would have jumped head first into it.

After that it becomes a bit of an obsession. The plans he makes to get his hands on holy water and secure himself some true, everlasting peace would boggle the mind of any sane man. He does not feel sane.

Ironically, the moment that Aziraphale caves and hands him the thermos of holy water is the exact moment Crowley stops needing it. Because _you go too fast for me_ certainly isn’t a _yes_ – but it’s not a definitive _no_ either. It’s the first spark of hope Crowley has had since 41AD.

Hope is a dangerous thing but it is also the only thing worth living for, Crowley has found. He knows it is unfair for him to pin his hopes on a single angel – particularly unfair on Aziraphale who has no idea of the thoughts running through Crowley’s head – but that hope is the only thing keeping him from his own destruction.

He takes that holy water and he hides it away. Sometimes he is tempted but then he remembers: _You go too fast for me, Crowley_.

If that’s what it takes, Crowley can learn to go slow.

*****

It’s amazing how damnably normal everything is.

To look around them at the other couples and groups dining at the Ritz, you wouldn’t know that the end of the world has just been averted. What he and Aziraphale had done in the last few days is momentous and meaningful and no one on earth has any idea anything at all has happened except a witch, two witch hunters, a group of small children and a lady whose body Aziraphale had hijacked. And even they have only a fraction of the whole tale.

Aziraphale moans around a mouthful of rich chocolate mousse and something inside of Crowley dies. He can’t keep doing this. They’ve faced down the powers of Heaven and Hell and that must count for something.

“Angel,” he says, drawing Aziraphale’s attention away from his dessert, “I love you.”

Aziraphale swallows his food, sets his spoon aside and pats at his mouth with a napkin before he speaks. It is the longest minute of Crowley’s existence.

“I love you too, darling.”

Aziraphale says it like it isn’t the first time he’s said it. He says it like a phrase that sits easily and readily in his mouth. He says it like he’s been saying it for centuries – and Crowley suddenly realises that maybe he has been. Not in those exact words per se but in little ways, little acts of kindness and affection. Long nights spent drinking and quiet smiles and uncounted favours. And he realises that that means that Aziraphale has read his acts of love for what they were too.

“Will you come back to mine?” Crowley asks. “We’ll sort out your shop tomorrow.”

As they leave the Ritz, Aziraphale reaches into the space between them, that carefully curated no-man’s zone, and Crowley throws caution to the wind and takes his hand. They walk like that until they reach the Bentley and then Crowley drives 20 miles over the speed limit as the car croons to them about clinging together as the years go by.

“Shall we go to bed?” suggests Aziraphale as Crowley wills the front door of his apartment to open. “It’s been a long day for both of us.”

Then they’re in the bedroom, and Aziraphale is kissing him so tenderly and sweetly that Crowley is suddenly crying. It comes in great, racking sobs, a good two thousand years of sorrow being unloaded all at once, just in time to start it all over again.

“Oh, darling boy, what’s wrong?”

“’s nothing,” answers Crowley, trying to control himself. “Sorry, just ignore me. I’m being silly.”

Aziraphale tilts his head, kisses the trails of tears along their course, walks them backwards until they fall down on the bed and clings to Crowley, keeping him warm and sheltered until the tears subside.

Then Aziraphale is kissing him again and it feels right. It feels so right. It felt right last time, too, whispers a treacherous voice in his head. He tries to ignore it.

“Can I?” Aziraphale asks as he hovers above Crowley, hands on the waistband of his skinny jeans.

Crowley says yes, and yes to everything after that, yes, yes, yes, foolish and foolhardy in his love.

And Crowley prays, _please, please, let it be okay this time_.

*****

Crowley hears noise from the other room and begins to mentally prepare himself for what he may have to do again. He is ready to face that wrecked Aziraphale again, that crying out for God Aziraphale, that Aziraphale who no longer wants him.

It’s not easy, though, and he feels the tears gather in his eyes, threatening to spill over at any moment.

Aziraphale comes into the bedroom and for a moment Crowley doesn’t believe it.

He’s happy. He’s smiling. Then Aziraphale sees the look on Crowley’s face and his smile falls. “Is everything alright, dear boy?”

“Aziraphale?”

“See, it’s only that I thought I heard you shout,” says Aziraphale with a look of concern. “And now you look like you’re about to cry. Did you have a nightmare?”

“It was…” Crowley swipes at his eyes, “it was nothing. No nightmares.”

Aziraphale comes and sits on the bed’s edge and places his hand on Crowley’s thigh, hidden beneath the blankets. He presses a kiss to the demon’s forehead.

“Did you have a lovely dream then, dear?”

“I did. A lovely dream about who I love best.”


End file.
